That's the conclusion we reached in the parking lot outside the movie theater, after having watched 106 minutes of terse sulking.

The ghost of Vesper haunts "Quantum"

"Quantum of Solace" (or was it "Solace of Quantum"? no matter) had a grieving James Bond extract a small measure -- apparently small enough to be considered a quantum -- of revenge for the death of the last installment's Bond girl.

We give them points for trying to update the franchise; it had indeed grown a bit stale, with the requisite parts -- car chase, Bond in explosion-charred tuxedo -- lined up on a check list. And hooray!: Its big finale didn't take place in an underground bunker staffed by guards all wearing matching jumpsuits.

Yet they also tried to give the series an emotional make-over. This Bond is bent on vengeance, wounded by both the death and betrayal of Vesper, his love interest in the recent remake of "Casino Royale."

A flashback would've helped, because veteran Bond-watchers have grown accustomed to the tradition of female leads never making a return appearance. Being a Bond girl is never a recurring role.

We will say right now that yes, we understand that some feel they should be called "Bond women," because they are fully formed adults. They are not girls. Right. Got it. They have become more complex over the years, more self-sufficient, more interesting. And all that's a good thing.

Yet in the movie-plot sense, they are still girls. That plot is simple: Boy meets girl. They're girls. Bond is the boy.

His dour mourning this time around naturally gets in the way of Bond getting any new girl, including Camille, who ends up being a co-worker of sorts. (Well, he does bed one along the way, but she's merely convenient.)

Instead, his deepest relationship with a woman is maternal -- his attachment to Judi Dench's M.

That leaves nothing but the core plot, which defies a 25-word synopsis. Um....there was a creepy bad guy with a girlfriend who wanted to kill a general and they were all trying to corner the oil market...or maybe it was the water market. And sometimes it was snowing and sometimes they were in the desert.

A Bond-in-mourning means a Bond with no twinkle in his eye, and that's just wrong.

A Bond-in-mourning also means he's emotionally "taken," and that undercuts the character's core appeal to both sexes.

While men have spent countless hours debating and ranking the Bond girls, here's a little secret: Women have their favorite Bond. Sean Connery or Pierce Brosnan? Timothy Dalton or Roger Moore?

They certainly don't talk about it as much. They rarely rank them. But they surely notice -- as evidenced by the quiet, collective raising of a female eyebrow when Daniel Craig took over the role.

So it serves the rooting interest of neither male nor female moviegoers to have him stay in love. Fall in love, sure. Stay in love? There goes the franchise.